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'Gender apartheid' in Afghanistan

Posted by: The Conversation

Date: Friday, 30 August 2024

A glance through The Conversation archive reveals that when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021 our contributors were pretty downcast over the fate of Afghanistan’s women, warning of “enormous suffering to come.”

Three years on, such predictions have been proved painfully right. So-called “vice and virtue” laws recently enforced by the fundamentalist regime have put into sharp focus just how far rights for all, but especially women, have been eroded by the Taliban. Girls over the age of 12 are banned from education, women are forced to wear heavy hijabs and are only allowed to speak within the confines of their own homes. Women are even banned from looking at a man who is not their husband or blood relative.

“Restrictions have become so harsh that the resulting subjugation has been labelled ‘gender apartheid,’” explains Kambaiz Rafi of Durham University.

Elsewhere this week, we continue to keep a watchful eye on the U.S. election campaign, where, in Democratic Party circles at least, gender equality has taken a step forward (as men take a step back). Meanwhile Fan Yang, from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, explores what the candidates talk about, when they talk about “China.”

Matt Williams

Senior International Editor

EPA-EFE/Qudratallah Razwan

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Kambaiz Rafi, Durham University

Three years ago the Taliban promised it had changed. It is now clear that it hasn’t.

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